World War Two soldiers discover a secret horror from the past. Dedicated to Rafaela.

A door was kicked open with full force from the boot of a determined American GI who had just strafed across a street avoiding machine gun fire from the end of the street. As daylight suddenly transformed the dim indoors and revealed the German soldiers within, another kind of light flashed in the room. It was the kind that erupted from the barrel of a Thompson sub-machine gun, the type of weapon that the American soldier was packing and the kind that dealt justice to the krauts all day as they tried to escape back to their lines.

There were five men in the room and within seconds all were dead, the soldier not bothering to stop for any examination of any kind, because there wasn’t any time and he had other objectives to worry about. He rushed through the room and slammed his shoulder into another door and raced through the house towards the back, spraying lead through an already cracked window and reloading his weapon on the run. Two more Americans were now behind him and covered him as he ran to another building and performed the same task as the last, wiping out all enemy forces. It was apparent from that these men were used to combat, for their movements were so instant and their actions so sudden as to be spontaneous, some would observe, mechanical. Debris and dust filled the air as the men ran towards their destination, of which was only known to them.

They were all young men, no older than their mid-twenties or late teens. All had seen considerable combat and were used to the experience that warfare offered and this conditioning could perhaps attribute to their seemingly remorseless run through these enemy lines. War was a dehumanizing experience even for the most humane and loving men and was often listed among the many casualties of combat, as innocence is lost along with compassion and empathy, but the eyes of the men betrayed this belief. These men had a look of determination and it was far beyond the sheer joy of the slaughter that was behind and ahead of them. It was something else entirely and as their forces began to fill the wasted spots that they left in their wake, it was apparent that something larger was at hand than a mere military action. These men were involved in some sort of grim race, whatever that race may be for was as unknown as the objective.